Grady Kiefer
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Grady Kiefer | |
|---|---|
| Career | |
| Profession | MechWarrior, Arena Gladiator |
A small-time mercenary MechWarrior, Grady Kiefer would come out of nowhere to fight in the arenas of the Solaris Games to become the 3049 "Champion of Solaris".[1] [2]
Contents
History[edit]
A member of Team Venom, its destruction by the Draconis Combine in 3044 forced Kiefer to subcontract to Hansen's Roughriders despite inheriting the unit's funds.[3][4]
As of 3049, Grady Kiefer was a young mercenary in command of a small-time and virtually unknown lance sized unit. Kiefer would likely remained as unknown as his unit had it not been for the Solaris Gaming Commission developing a novel solution to Solaris VII's Class Six arenas requiring major refurbishment resulting in reduced viewership and revenues - that year's Solaris Championship would be a three-week, single-elimination tournament open to all comers and hosted in a variety of Class Five arenas across Solaris.[2][4]
Deciding to try his luck along with hundreds of Great House soldiers and other mercenaries from across the Inner Sphere, the unranked Grady Kiefer entered the championship at seventy-five-to-one odds only to defeat all comers in "Death or Glory", "Neon Grid", "4-Cross", "Laserclasm", "Death Dance", "Black Pit" and "Iron Skull Mountain" to become the 3049 Grand Champion.[2]
Kiefer ultimately chose not to defend his title in 3050 to resume his mercenary career, opting instead to accept contracts that would unwittingly place him right in the path of the attacking Clan invaders where he became stranded in the Occupation Zone and formed an alliance with the surviving pirates of the Oberon Confederation.[2][4]
Ludo van Cassias of the Solaris Gaming Commission would cite Kiefer as his choice for the ultimate dark horse Champion to fight in the Solaris Games when interviewed by Interstellar News Network.[2]
Apocryphal Character Information[edit]
CCG Card[edit]
Grady Kiefer is mentioned by name in the fluff text for two "Solaris Games Veteran" cards for the BattleTech Collectible Card Game (CCG), in the MechWarrior and Commander's Edition (otherwise identical):
| “ | Champion don't mean squat. Ever hear of Niculcea Dumitrescu? Grady Kiefer? Chaka Mobutu? I didn't... oh, uh, hello, Kai.... | ” |
This implies that Kiefer's fame and career in the Solaris Games was short-lived, and that he was largely forgotten again a few years later already.
It should be noted that the CCG cards, although official, do explicitly not count among the canonical sources for BattleTech at this time. The fluff text quoted above must therefore be considered apocryphal.
MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries[edit]
Over the course of the storyline for the (apocryphal) MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries computer game, which is set between 3044 and the 3052 battles of Luthien and Tukayyid, the player has the opportunity to partake in (and win) the 3049 Solaris Games championships: As a promotional stunt, the Solaris Game Council has invited mercenary units from across the Inner Sphere to enter the 3049 Championship Games. None of the three arenas ("Death or Glory", "Neon Grid", "Iron Skull Mountain") nor any of the other named contenders that appear in the game have been mentioned elsewhere in BattleTech canon.
With no further information to dispute the background of the 3049 Grand Champion, many fans over the years chose to assume that the MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries player character and Grady Kiefer were one and the same, this fact eventually being canonized with Issue 17 of Shrapnel in 2024.
Though Shrapnel does not specifically mention the name of his unit, with the player character from the game being Grady Kiefer it would establish him to have been the lone survivor of the mercenary Team Venom who continued his mercenary career with nothing but the inherited funds of the otherwise destroyed unit and his COM-7X Commando. He may subsequently have joined Hansen's Roughriders or led his own unit, which in turn may or may not have been Team Venom (if the player elects to run his own mercenary unit instead of joining the Roughriders, he has total freedom in naming the unit). He would then have experienced the basic points of the games' storyline, including being stranded behind enemy lines in the early Clan Invasion, escaping the Clans on a pirate DropShip from the Oberon Confederation (the FireStalion), and fighting against the Clans again on Wolcott and Luthien.
BattleMechs[edit]
Kiefer piloted a COM-7X Commando.[4]
References[edit]
Bibliography[edit]
- BattleTech Collectible Card Game - Solaris Games Veteran cards
- MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries, by implication
- Shrapnel Issue 16
- Solaris VII: The Game World (boxed set), Player's Handbook
- They Walk Alone: Mercenary Freelancers from Shrapnel Issue 15
- Voices of the Sphere: The Dark Horses from Shrapnel Issue 17